


In Real L-I-F-E

by bogged



Category: Actor RPF
Genre: Breakfast porn, Fluff, M/M, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:58:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bogged/pseuds/bogged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which the concerned parties eat a lot of breakfast, get drunk, make questionable cultural references, and eventually attempt to get their groove back. As a plot-related side note: this story is apparently sponsored by sipping tequila! The drink of drunks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Real L-I-F-E

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zlot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zlot/gifts).



> For zlot, who seems pretty awesome, if a person can say that without it being weird. You have to be kind of awesome to think of a pairing that was just as much fun to research as it was to write.
> 
> Also about ten million thanks to my wonderful beta-droid, who alternated between holding my hand and slapping it and staunchly refused to let me give up so close to the end. I would be dead in a gutter without you.

Jesse wakes earlier than normal.

Through bleary eyes he can see the sun has started filling their hotel room, dripping in small puddles on the floor. He pushes himself into a halfhearted sit, taking care not to overly disturb the mattress. Even so, Zach stirs, his skin reacting to the sudden lack of body heat against his back.

"Go back to sleep," Jesse whispers, making just enough noise to ensure Zach is definitely awake now.

"I'm starving," Zach mumbles, licking his sleep dry lips.

"You have been awake for literally three seconds," Jesse says, smiling behind the fists rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He inhales to prepare himself for the relative cool of the room beyond the accumulated heat in their cover dome and swings his legs off the bed.

"I'm going to the bathroom," he states, pulling his underwear out of his butt as he walks toward the toilet. "You order breakfast."

 

-+-

 

"So I was kind of joking when I suggested they bring us one of everything," Zach starts through a mouthful of about seven different breakfast foods. "But this waffle is literally a map of Heaven. God exists and this is where He lives. His house is surrounded by the lake of butter. The whipped cream angels keep out unwanted visitors."

Jesse licks a bit of raspberry jam from the corner of his lips, nodding.

"Have you tried the pancakes?"

"No, but have you tried the french toast? I think this is challah bread."

"Oh my god, this is stuffed with cream."

"You _have_ to try one of these strawberries. They taste like succulent angel balls."

"One, what is with the religiosity this morning—two, this chocolate thing? There is - oh my god - there is _cheese_ inside of it. Who is cooking in this hotel? Do you think it's Paula Deen? I've always wanted to give her a smooch."

"My dick just got a little hard. Wait, I'm going to Google search Jesse Tyler Ferguson/Paula Deen fanfiction."

"Zachary Quinto, you are not," Jesse insists through a mouthful of the lightest croissant he has ever had the intense pleasure of letting run over his tongue. Each flaky layer feels like butter melting over the sides of a golden spoon via the steamy looks of someone shirtless who also has excellent bone structure.

"You're right, I'm not," Zach agrees. "But only because I'm too busy tongue-fucking this orange. Have you ever seen a more lascivious fruit?"

Jesse pauses in his fingering of the raspberry jam dish to raise his eyebrows.

"Only when I—you aren't even listening to me, are you?" he asks with faux levity, hard to achieve while one is attempting to suck the jam-tinted skin off of their fingers entirely.

Zach looks down at Jesse from his tower of egg whites and turkey bacon and for a moment Jesse thinks he might have struck a nerve. Him and Zach, they're a thing. They're real, but they have yet to reach a completely solid state and Zach is somewhat finicky. In his more disturbing moments - usually right before falling asleep - Jesse sometimes thinks Zach is similar to his beard: soft and fun to touch on most days, but if you catch him at the wrong time he can be all prickles and red marks to your skin. This train of thought usually leads Jesse to imagining waking up one morning with Zach's body curled around his chin, beard-style, making horrendous sass-mouth comments about everything he eats and says and shoving breath mints between his lips every five minutes, imploring him not to laugh so hard because it keeps ruffling his hair.

It's because of thoughts like these that Jesse gains a reputation as something of a sleep laugher.

 

-+-

 

"Are you doing your hair or waiting for it to gain sentience?" Jesse calls through the closed bathroom door. "Because we need to leave. Car services don't wait forever and, well, no, they do wait forever but you are seriously stretching the meaning of consideration for other peoples' lives here."

"Mm brshung mah theef," Zach mushes.

"I'm telling everyone at dinner that we're late because of your hair."

"Good thing we're going to a benefit for a bunch of queers! I see commiseration in my future."

"Ugh." Jesse rolls his eyes.

There's silence from the bathroom as the water spout turns off. The door opens and Zach's face is suddenly on top of Jesse's, his lips slightly wet and cold and pharmaceutical mintiness on top of Jesse's chapstick softness. They kiss with lips only and when Zach attempts to slip Jesse his tongue, he gets pushed back by a hand to the chest.

"What?" Zach chuckles, peeling Jesse's fingers off of his chest.

"Late," Jesse states. "Us. Very."

Zach rolls his eyes, holding his palm against Jesse's cheek. His fingertips skim the top of Jesse's beard. Jesse watches Zach watch him. He is looking forward to getting into the elevator, where perhaps he can get Zach's lips a slightly deeper shade of pink.

 

-+-

 

They skip the red carpet because Zach insists it makes him feel cheap. Jesse argues that red carpets for benefit dinners and silent auctions aren't as soul sucking as premiere red carpets. Zach proclaims them to be especially unnecessary. Jesse asks if any part of this career could be categorized as "necessary," to which Zach responds with a lengthy diatribe on the cultural importance of popular media which lasts them ten blocks and causes the driver to roll up the privacy partition.

Jesse is explaining why having the potential to be excellent at filibustering _isn't_ an insult when a blonde woman from the benefit committee approaches them.

"Dinner is just about to start, gentlemen," she smiles, seeming genuinely happy to be awake and working and wearing that dress. "If you could please take your seats?"

Their sideways glances are slick, but she is slicker. "What are your names?" she asks. "I'll show you tp your seats.”

"She's good," Zach mouths behind her back.

Jesse points at her shoes.

The woman turns toward them again to make small talk. Zach texts Jesse a frowny face.

 

-+-

 

Dinner is an uneventful five courses of varied meats bleeding on fine china. Zach and Jesse are sitting on opposite sides of the table they'd been assigned to. Their tablemates are chatty but forgettable, people Jesse will only remember if he works with them on a future project and needs to clamber on a chat show for a "funny story" about how they had actually met long before. For once, Jesse thinks he might actually be the most famous person at a table, which is vaguely insulting.

The minute he finishes dessert, lemon something glazed in a minimum $500 donation-to-the-cause reduction, he decides to hit the bar. Jesse attempts to catch Zach's eye, but he's deep in conversation about cats or bandannas or various things he has licked - Jesse is only catching portions of the dialog - with the attractive, blond, possibly Disney alumnus sitting to his left.

 _Hitting the bar like a screen door during a hurricane, which conveniently I will now be having 700 of._ Jesse texts. He waits for a moment to see if Zach will check his phone and, half pleased at his conversational manners when Zach ignores the vibration against his upper thigh, pushes his chair back rather roughly into something considerably softer than free air.

"Ouch," the mystery being says.

Jesse pulls a grimace, his lips stretching diagonally southward across his face as though someone sitting in his lap is pulling on puppet strings tied to the jowls Jesse can't seem to be convinced he doesn't have.

"I'm trapped," the man behind him says with a grunt. "I'm trapped and I'm sober. Could you maybe—"

 _OMG_ Jesse think squeals, totally recognizing that voice. He pulls away from the wall, apologies rolling off of his tongue in time with his feet, carrying him and his captive awash toward the bar.

 

-+-

 

There is a point in the dinner conversation where Zach extends his line of sight, partly because his neighbor’s story has begun to circle the drain, but also to check in on Jesse, to see what he is doing and whether or not he has noticed that Zach is totally not paying attention to him.

Jesse’s absence is immediately apparent, his empty seat springing off a chain reaction of eyebrow raising that is subtle yet potent, like an off the cuff insult from someone with a foreign accent.

“Sorry,” Zach murmurs, interrupting what he hopes was the end of the story being told to him. “I have to take a leak. Finish in a minute?”

He nods and smiles, as does his new friend (friend? Sure, why not) and they both utilize the stability of the dinner table—one pushing away, one pulling forward.

“Where are you?” Zach ponders under his breath, walking vaguely in the direction of the restroom so as not to seem rude in case he is being watched.

Just as he thinks he is actually going to have to stand in the bathroom playing the silent waiting game, taking this pantomime to its conclusion, he spots the back of Jesse’s head bobbing excitedly at the bar in the midst of a sea of gel-darkened coiffures.

“Got you, you beardy little fuck,” Zach smirks. He cannot tell whether Jesse is talking to anyone or is just lost in the groove of the mind-meltingly pallid jazz covers swimming through the dining hall. The tides grow ever stronger toward the magnetic pull of an open bar, allowing Zach to approach unnoticed from behind, the creepiest angle from whence one can approach.

It isn’t until Zach is close enough to breathe on Jesse that he notices the hand on the crook of his elbow, the multi-layered laughter and crisp consonants peppering the air.

“You should really read the rest of the series,” Daniel Radcliffe laughs, removing his hand from the crook of Jesse’s arm, pausing to take a drink of what judging by the shape of the glass must be sipping tequila. “The passages Forester writes on Horatio and music, you have to wonder what he was meant to be saying. Of course it’s all completely fucked for us, now. Differing spheres of reference and all that, you know.”

“Yeah, totally,” Jesse nods.

“Yeah that’s really cool,” Zach butts in, unable to control the volume of his voice.

“Oh!” Dan yelps, the breath knocked out of him by surprise. He makes busy burying himself in his glass.

“Hello,” Jesse drawls, looking up at Zach over his shoulder. Zach taps a discreet _Found you_ on the small of Jesse’s back. “We were just talking about books.”

“I heard,” Zach nods.

“Hi,” Dan introduces himself. He motions toward the bartender and a third drink appears as though invoked by mere desire.

“Oh, I’m fine-” Zach tries.

“Trust me,” Dan winks over the rim of his glass.

Zach takes the drink, sniffing at it cautiously.

“You can’t smell roofies,” Dan says, jovial.

“That would defeat the point,” Jesse finishes the thought.

“Exactly.”

“No, that’s not... I’m a wine guy,” Zach says, deflating.

“Ah,” Dan smiles. “Good to know I don’t have a total rape face, then.” He shifts in his seat and then, with a startled look in his already wide eyes, pulls his phone out from the front pocket of his dark gray trousers. “Forgot I had this,” he fades off, tapping the phone’s face with the dexterity of the sort of person who forgets they have a phone in their own pocket. “Lovely chat, then,” he says to Jesse. “I’ll give you back. We’ll be in touch, yeah?”

“Totally,” Jesse nods.

“Cool,” Dan smiles and then hops down from the bar chair, losing himself in the crowd.

“Sit,” Jesse commands, patting the empty seat.

“I’d rather stand,” Zach says plainly, lording over Jesse while exuding protective heatwaves from the follicles of his head. He looks down at the still untouched tequila in his hand for a silent moment and then, with a deep intake of breath, “So, that was pretty goddamn random.”

Jesse laughs. “Calm down. We were talking about him wanting to be on _Modern Family_.” He pauses to take a large sip of what Zach notices is the same sipping tequila, a drink Jesse would never procure for himself. “And books.”

“I am so calm. I am super calm, considering my—” Zach glances at the people next to him, sits down on the very edge of the previously proffered seat and scrapes its wooden legs across the marble floor until his knees interlock with Jesse’s, their patellas bouncing against themselves like pendulums. “My _boyfriend_ just let himself be chatted up by a fucking child star.”

“What? No,” Jesse says. “He’s like, twenty at least.”

Zach’s eyebrows form a straight line across his forehead. “I don’t care how old _he_ is. You’re in your fucking thirties. Accept it. Embrace it, because I was not planning on dealing with your midlife crisis for at least another twenty years, which I would like to point out once more to be roughly the age of that very nice boy you were just talking to about books, I’m sure.”

“Your eyes are literally turning green. I think you might be Hulking out,” Jesse looks up at him through his eyelashes and then, grabbing Zach by the triangular tip of his tie, pulls him down so Zach’s lips have just begun to impress against his temple. “It’s kind of hot.”

 

-+-

 

They step out into the cool night air and Jesse is all but flouncing down the sidewalk. Zach can see the appeal. He could flounce, if he wanted to. He definitely has the potential to flounce. The tequila he eventually decided to drink, and then the three after, they are serving his system as a calming agent. His limbs feel like noodles, but he simultaneously feels totally sexy. He’s like a really sexy noodle. If he were someone else, he would totally want to fuck this noodle.

Fifteen minutes previous, Jesse’s phone had buzzed against the curve of Zach’s hand. They were sitting at an abandoned end of the bar, comparing notes for what needed to be done tomorrow. Zach was writing a grocery list on a bar napkin. He had spilled a drop of tequila in the corner and drawn an arrow toward it, positive that he would remember it as a note to buy some of this sweet Mexican nectar the next day. It was like some sort of curious magic, the way it got better with every sip.

“Your phone,” he had said, pointing at the device buzzing awkward and loud on the bar, his voice vacant with thought.

“You check it,” Jesse responded. Zach had glanced at Jesse before palming the strange phone. This was new. If there was one thing no one could convince Zach of differently, phone sharing as a marker of relationship progress was definitely that thing, at least for tonight.

 **From:** Dan R.  
 **Time:** 10:50 PM  
 _Going for more drinks w/ some ppl. Somewhere more anonymous. Can’t guarantee karaoke, but def. dancing! You and Quinto need to come!_

Zach had read the text aloud, looking at Jesse for further instruction once finished.

“You wanna?” he had asked.

“I like dancing,” Jesse conceded.

“I like anonymity,” Zach agreed.

“Text him back.”

 _When’re you leaving?_ he had tapped in.

 **From:** Dan R.  
 **Time:** 10:52 PM  
 _10 min? Need to extract myself from convo & use the men’s._

 _Great. Meet us then near side door._ Zach had responded.

 **From:** Dan R.  
 **Time:** 10:52 PM  
 _Yay! I’m buying 1st round. :)_

Zach had rested the phone against the bar then. He glanced over his shoulder, feeling a childish, fearful glee at momentarily pretending to be someone else. He had not been able to stop himself from wondering whether Dan would have responded similarly had he known he was not talking to Jesse. Concurrently, his fingers seemed to be pulsing with a warmth that was likely due to the tequila, but had felt to Zach in that moment an awful lot like gratification.

 

-+-

 

Zach is not sure when his life decided to cascade from the relative manageability of fame and face recognition into the orgy of wackiness that has been thrust upon him with open arms and a scream of delight, but as much as he wants to he cannot deny its allure.

This so-called “anonymous” club ends up being a gay club, a point certainly not missed by Zach, who immediately takes it upon himself to make silent judgemental shapes with his eyebrows for as long as Jesse will stand to look at the strobe lights and lasers reflecting off of them. This lasts from the front door through to the second round, which Zach buys, taking advantage of the sheer magnitude of both his and Jesse’s gaping Muppet heads to clearly convey his browmotions from across the crowded dance floor.

“We’re dancing,” Jesse insists the moment Zach returns with the drinks to an all but vacated corner booth. “You left me with the children and they went dancing with their nubile muscles and shiny hair and now I’m jealous,” he pouts, downing half a gin and tonic. “I want to feel some rhythm in these old bones.”

“What if someone sees?” Zach asks over the music, surveying the dance floor. It’s crowded, but not new GaGa song crowded. Everyone has their space to dance, which means anyone could notice him.

“Yes,” Jesse nods, considering this. “Some of those people out there may have eyes.”

“I mean, what if someone sees us dancing with each other,” Zach stresses. “If they recognize me, Jesse. You know I’m not public. I don’t plan to be tomorrow, either.”

Jesse rolls his eyes. “If you can find a girl in here to dance with like a straight man for everyone’s amusement, I fully implore you to. Until then, I want to dance on your legs. Acquiesce to my desires!”

Zach knows Jesse would be great out there. He’s started using standardized testing words, which usually means he’s getting drunk enough to explore the recesses of his body and mind, to experiment and tease out that which nibbles at the corners of his day-to-day conscience.

Zach bites his lip.

“I can’t believe you,” Jesse shouts over the music, the gravity in his voice dropping square on Zach’s chest. “Dan is _straight_ and not only does he have no qualms about being seen in a gay club, having fun with other people, but he’s out there dancing, being a fun person who does the umm... the... well, I don’t know what that is, exactly. The ‘scotch tape refill’ or something.”

“The ‘blanket burrito surprise’.”

“The ‘broken ankle on _Dancing With the Stars_ ’.”

“Fine,” Zach says, shooting up the full ten thousand feet in the air his legs take him and downing a double rum and Coke in three gulps. “Let’s dance. If nothing else we can be proud of the fact that we know how to move our limbs like human beings.”

 

-+-

 

Moving one’s limbs like a human being apparently translates into Drunk-and-Horny as grinding against a back wall and seriously hoping no one walks in or out of the utility door. Zach’s back is pressed against the wall, his newly untucked dress shirt riding up high enough for him to guess that this structure is probably not used for much innocent leaning.

Jesse is working Zach’s neck and jaw, his tongue mimicking the pressure of his cock on Zach’s burgeoning erection.

“Jesus,” Zach curses. He snakes his hand in between their bodies, can feel the friction heat straining at the zip of Jesse’s jeans as he palms Jesse’s front, his fingertips teasing the clasp of his belt undone.

“I want you messy,” Jesse sneers, biting Zach’s shoulder. The role reversal is not lost on Zach, who is not accustomed to flailing for control of any situation. To that effect he attempts to twist Jesse against the wall but is halted when the haze of music and liquor and laughter clears from behind his eyes and he realizes his dick is currently being held.

“Shit,” Zach can’t help laughing, merciless and thick, pulling Jesse tight against him.

They kiss, fast tongues and open mouths, and when they part for air Jesse pulls his head back enough from Zach’s to lick the length of his palm. And then there is his hot cock, pressed tight against Zach’s from within Jesse’s wet fist.

“Dance,” Jesse instructs, slowly fisting the heads of their cocks, pushing against each other until they are both so hard there isn’t much room left to give.

“Who _are_ you?” Zach breathes, moving Jesse’s hand over their slits, smearing salty precum over their hands. “Open,” he instructs. Jesse grinds into him to keep the pressure on their cocks, his sticky hand holding himself up on the wall behind Zach’s shoulder, his tongue licking their hot mess off Zach’s fingers with insatiable strokes.

“Don’t mess up my shirt,” Jesse grunts, maneuvering their bodies a few degrees to one side as he swipes a decently- if not hygenically-clean cocktail napkin from a side table.

“What makes you think I’m going to—” Except Jesse meets Zach’s eyes with that stupid soulful depth of feeling he always chooses to convey at just the worst of times. Before Zach can get to feeling too weird about emotions Jesse is rasping and burying his head in Zach’s neck. He can feel his balls rise and tighten and then Zach is one twitch behind Jesse, both of them riding out their orgasms against each other, against this wall, in this club, to this song, at this age.

 

-+-

 

“I am going to cuddle you so hard you will feel warm and protected for _years_ ,” Zach slurs into Jesse’s neck in the elevator up to their hotel room. The door bings open on the tenth floor and they tumble out, their long limbs having turned into slippery stilts.

“Stupid magnets,” Jesse grumbles, repeatedly slipping the key card into the slot upside down. “How do you work?”

“Oh, baby,” Zach grins, sloppy like dripping syrup. “I love it when you cultural reference me.”

“A-ha!” Jesse exclaims, way too loud for this daylight hour. He steps inside the room and moves to the side, gesturing toward the bed. “Sleep for you, sleep for me, a boop de dee” he sing-songs, removing his clothes the second the door closes.

“Aw,” Zach pouts. He grabs Jesse by the elastic ridge of his black boxer briefs, pulls him close so that they touch completely down the front. “No more fun?”

Jesse’s face falls. “Even thinking about ‘fun’ is making my dick sad.”

“But too-drunk-early-morning-regret-hour is the best time for fun,” Zach insists, not really sure words are coming out of his mouth or, if they are, what those words may be.

“Sleep first,” Jesse insists, pushing Zach against the bed and crawling over his awkwardly sprawled body like a very tired child. Zach reorients himself, pulling off his clothes while vaguely thinking of the water they should be drinking right now. He crawls into bed and pulls Jesse’s half-conscious body across the sheets. He smells like liquor and sweat and future regrets.

“At least take these off,” Zach insists, pulling Jesse’s underwear down over the curve of his ass. The alcohol in his breath sticks to Jesse's shoulder, tainting his pale skin with the bitter sting of the distilled. Jesse allows his prone body to be manipulated into nakedness. “Ahhh,” Zach sighs from the smooth, warm skin on his crotch.

“Besides,” Jesse burbles, as though he had been talking all this time. He settles himself against Zach, entwining their drink-sticky fingers against the soft hairs on his chest. He uses their joined hand to pull the duvet over his head as sunlight begins to dribble into the room. “We'll always have tomorrow.”


End file.
